Free, and Then What?

I recently wrote a blog about Juneteenth. Since then, I have continued to learn. As a white woman raised in Southern Louisiana during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s by our beloved Black housekeeper Lillie Mae, who became my second mother, I long to know more about what her ancestors endured.

As I continue my research, I am discovering so much through the stories of formerly enslaved men and women, whose voices live on through interviews and in books, expressing their emotions through their memories. Being white and never experiencing the trauma of bondage, I know that I will never fully understand what they endured. But I can listen. I can seek to understand. I can walk beside them, if only for a moment.

There are a few things that will always stay with me.

Historian Eric Foner writes that, for many, the first act of freedom after Juneteenth and emancipation was simply walking away from the plantation. This was a powerful declaration that they now controlled their own movements.

One of the most traumatic parts of slavery was families being torn apart. Finding family members became one of the highest priorities of newfound freedom. Husbands searched for wives. Mothers searched for children who had been taken from them and sold. Brothers searched for sisters. Some walked hundreds of miles in the hope of finding loved ones they had not seen for years, or even decades, after they had been sold to different plantations, sometimes in other states.

Others placed "Information Wanted" advertisements in newspapers or had them read aloud in churches, hoping someone, somewhere, might know where their family could be found.

One story that deeply touched me was that of Mary Brown. In 1848, her young daughter was taken from her arms and sold. Eighteen years later, in 1866, after slavery had ended, Mary placed an advertisement, hoping someone, somewhere, knew where her daughter could be found. Below is her ad.

"Mary Brown wishes to find her daughter, Mary Wesley Glassco. She was sold about 18 years ago by Judge John A. Meredith of Richmond. I have not heard from her since. Any information addressed to Mary Brown, care of First African Church, Richmond, will be thankfully received."

I never found out whether Mary Brown was ever reunited with her daughter. But her advertisement, along with more than 4,500 family-search notices, has been preserved through the Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery project at the National Archives.

As a mother of three sons, I tried to wrap my head and my heart around what she must have endured. I imagined a slave owner walking into my home, looking at my boys, pointing to one of them, and saying, "This is the one I want to sell." He pulls my son away as I scream and he cries, our eyes locked as he is dragged through the door, never to be seen again.

God never intended for families to be torn apart in such a horrific and inhumane way. These enslaved men, women, and children were all created in the image of God, Imago Dei, yet they were treated as chattel.

Another act of self-determination was choosing a new name. Historians tell us that many formerly enslaved people selected names such as Freeman, Lincoln, or Washington, a declaration that their identity now belonged to them.

As I leaned in to these stories, I found myself asking a question I would like to ask you:

If I had heard the news of freedom on June 19, 1865, what would I have done?

Would I have stood in jubilation and shock at the very same time?

Would I have immediately walked off the plantation, not knowing where I was going, but simply knowing I was free?

Would I have spent months, even years, searching for my child, my husband, my mother, or my sister?

If I were elderly, would I have stayed, knowing I could still find food and shelter there because it’s all I have ever known, even though freedom was finally calling me out the door?

These are questions I will never have to answer. But asking them has helped me understand Juneteenth and the gift of freedom in a way I never had before.

I don't have answers to my own questions. I only have my willingness to keep asking them.

And maybe that's enough for now. Maybe that's where it starts.

Lord, thank You for Lillie Mae, and for every woman like her who loved a child that wasn't her own by blood. Thank You for the courage it took to walk off a plantation with nothing but hope. Thank You for the mothers who searched, and the fathers who kept searching, and the ones who never stopped hoping for word of a child sold away decades before.

Help us remember. Help us not look away from the parts of this story that are hard to hold. Help us see Your image, Imago Dei, in every person who endured what I can only imagine.

Friends, I'm not asking you for much. Read one story from the "Last Seen" project through the National Archives at https://www.informationwanted.org/. Say a name out loud and carry that name with you for a day.

One name remembered, and one story told, keep this history from fading a little longer.